Our Father Is Very Near

Missionaries who must translate the Bible into foreign tongues often have a most difficult time in entering into the understanding and idioms of the native language. On the other hand, their very errors sometimes point up suggestions which, though technically mistaken, are spiritually helpful. When Dr.

Verbeck was translating the Bible into the unfamiliar Japanese language, he stumbled into an error in his rush to complete his work as a translator. When he came to the Lord’s Prayer, he wanted to learn the word in Japanese for “heaven.”

He pointed up to the sky and asked his teacher, “What’s heaven?” The Japanese did not know the word for “heaven,” so he gave him what he thought the missionary wanted, and supplied him with the word which means “upstairs.” Then the missionary, in looking up the word for “father,” got it in the diminutive form.

He was later shocked to discover that he had actually translated the Lord’s Prayer to begin in the following way: “Our Papa, who lives upstairs.” Perhaps it would be a happy thing for us all to remember that God is our Father and is as near to us as upstairs. He is not a God far away after all, for He is closer to us than breathing and nearer than hands and feet.